Orthodox Christmas foods in the Skylands

Christmas lands on January 7 for the Orthodox churches that keep the old Julian calendar, among them Russia, Serbia and Georgia, because that calendar runs 13 days behind ours. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine left that group in 2023, in part to put distance between itself and Moscow. Ukrainian families still serve twelve dishes on Christmas Eve. The supper closes a long fast, so nothing at the table is meat or dairy. The dozen stands for the apostles or the months, and the meal starts when the first star shows. Kutya is wheat berries, barley or rice with dried fruit, nuts, poppy seeds and honey. Beet soup carries vushka, “little ear” dumplings. Stuffed cabbage takes its Ukrainian name from holub, pigeon: pigeons once went inside the leaves at aristocratic feasts, before grains replaced them.

In Ethiopia, Orthodox believers give up meat, dairy, eggs and alcohol from November 25, and on Christmas Eve you may see people carrying live chickens home. Christmas dinner is doro wat, chicken stewed with berbere and served with a boiled egg per person on injera, its onions started in a dry pot with no fat at all.